


In Which Angelica and Clem Meet a Local

by OlwenDylluan



Series: It Cannot Be Taken From You [7]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Fluff, Humor, Kid Fic, Other, POV Outsider, Protective Siblings, Siblings, Snakes, does it count as kid fic if the kids are snakes and so is one of the parents, no beta we post like desperate men, no matter how you try to keep your kids safe they find ways around it, snek!babies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-25
Updated: 2019-10-25
Packaged: 2021-01-03 08:07:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21176150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OlwenDylluan/pseuds/OlwenDylluan
Summary: A local kid encounters two of the snek!babies. (Starring Angelica and Clem!)This takes place afterQuilly's ficwhere the snek!babies learn how to shift in and out of human form. The family has relocated to a cottage in the countryside. Snakes mature more quickly than humans do, so the kids are older.13 Nov 2019: Flameraven did anAMAZING drawing of Angelica and Clem!!! Go give her all the love!





	In Which Angelica and Clem Meet a Local

In the spring, a family had moved into the orchard cottage outside of town. There were kids, it was said, but they didn’t start at the local school; the village kids envied them, while their parents assumed that the family had decided there wasn’t much point in having their kids attend for the few weeks left before summer hols. As late spring became summer, the village learned that two men were the heads of this family. One was kind and cheerful, the other… well, wasn’t. He exuded a somewhat aggressive sense of keep-away, which most people were glad to do.

What the children of the village found odd was that they couldn’t pin down how many kids were actually in the house. They didn’t come down to the village with their--guardians?--not to visit the library, nor the shops, nor church. And as always, when children don’t have a clear answer, they make it up. For them, the cottage and its inhabitants became a mysterious object of speculation.

_ I dare you to go to the orchard cottage. _

_ Bet you can’t scrump an apple. _

_ You’re too much of a scaredy-cat to bike past after sunset. _

James had taken that last dare. He’d made a plan: he’d bike past while the sun was up, a little later each day, until the seventh day it would be just past sunset. He’d announce it to his mates so that he’d have witnesses that day, watching from down the lane. It was about a fifteen-minute ride from the village, set in a more rural area than most other houses in the village. Lots of fields. He didn’t see a lot of traffic on his rides. So far he had cycled past three days this week, and nothing had happened. The house might as well have been deserted.

It was late afternoon, after teatime. The August sun was warm, and the breeze light. He’d started slowing down as he biked past, looking a little closer and picking up more details each time. The riot of roses climbing around the front door. The extensive garden that had developed in the front. The remarkably lush trees in the orchard, which were doing so much better than anyone in the village could remember.

And it wasn’t frightening. It was a perfectly normal house. One day he’d even heard a couple of kids laughing in the back garden, the only indication of inhabitants to date.

Today he pedalled slowly as he came up on the house. The stone wall around the front garden wasn’t right up against the road; it was set a ways back, halfway between the road and the house itself. James would have gone right past as usual, except something made him brake. He put a foot down on the dirt road as he squinted through his dusty glasses.

There was a black snake on the wall.

It was a good sight larger than any other snake he’d seen around. You could hardly miss it. Well, people in cars probably would, going by so quickly, and it’s not like people walked this way. But James could see it, clear as anything, and he was partly fascinated, partly excited, and, all right, yes, partly scared. It was _ big_. His heart hammered in his chest.

It wasn’t moving. Was it dead? Probably not. He wasn’t an expert, but he was pretty sure snakes wouldn’t go out into the open to die. Animals usually hid, right? Dying was a vulnerable thing, and animals hid when they felt vulnerable.

He cranked his bike around and shuffled closer, his feet kicking up dust from the road. The snake lay on the top of the stone wall, unmoving.

Maybe it was asleep?

He wasn’t going to go all the way up to find out, that was for sure. He was used to grass snakes, which usually grew about as long as a meter stick, but this one seemed longer than that. It was thicker, too, and didn’t have the patterning grass snakes had. It was all black.

For a moment his heart skipped a beat or two. Was it an adder? He’d heard that some adders were black.

No. Adders were much smaller.

James drew a bit closer. The snake was a matte black, with occasional hints of what looked like deep red along the edge of its belly pressed against the stones. He resettled his glasses, leaning forward over the handlebars to see more clearly.

“What d’you think you’re doing?”

Startled, James looked up. A girl stood in the garden at the corner of the house. Her red hair was caught in a tail on one side of her head, but hung loose in a tangle on the other. She wore a denim sundress over a black t-shirt, and was barefoot. There were smudges along the sides of her face.

“Uh,” was all James could say.

The girl crossed her arms, waiting.

“There’s… there’s a ruddy great snake here,” he said. “I was trying to figure out what kind it is, and if it was dead.”

She stared at him. He guessed she was about… nine? Eight? A couple of years younger than him, anyway.

“Do you… live here?” he said tentatively.

Instead of answering, she stalked up to the wall, and, to James’ choked astonishment, _ picked up the snake_. She gathered its coils into her arms.

“Clem doesn’t like to be stared at,” she said. “Leave my brother alone.”

What a weird thing to say.

“Sure. I’m sorry. I… I hope he was… enjoying the sun.”

The girl seemed to relax fractionally, but didn’t drop her disconcerting stare.

“Clem likes sunbathing. It’s his favourite thing to do.”

“He’s… so he’s your snake?”

“He’s a member of my family.”

This girl took her pet seriously. Well, that was no odder than Mrs Taylor down Church Street, who carried her dog in a purse and let it sit at her table with its own plate. True, Mrs Taylor didn’t call the dog her brother; but she did call it her baby. Not so different.

“I’m James,” he said.

“Angelica,” said the girl. The snake stirred, moving up her arm to curl across her shoulders. James squinted against the afternoon light. Her eyes were the bluest blue he’d ever seen, and she had freckles across her nose. Closer up, the smudges on the sides of her face seemed darker than one would expect from dirt.

“Did… your snake get out, somehow?”

“The wall is his favourite place. Father tells him to stay in the back garden, but Clem says he likes how the stones in the wall feel on his belly. Father’s out, so Clem snuck out here to nap.”

“Doesn’t he know it’s dangerous?” James asked, then realised what he’d said. The girl was being so serious than he’d fallen into playing along. But arguing with her seemed… a really bad idea.

“Of course. But we check on him now and again. And not many people pass here.” She gave him a significant look. “It’s pretty out of the way. I think that’s why Father and Azirafather chose it.”

“What do your dads do?”

“They watch over people.”

“What, like bodyguards?”

Angelica ignored the question, moving closer to lean her forearms on the wall. Her intent gaze had shifted to his bike.

“What’s it like to ride a bike?” she said.

“You don’t have one? You’ll need one, it’s how we all get about here. It’s fine, I guess.” No, she deserved more than that, this queer girl with the black snake over her shoulders. “It’s a bit like flying, when you get to a good clip. What I imagine flying to be like, I mean.”

“We’ve never needed bikes. We lived in London before this.” Her eyes travelled over the bike, taking in every detail. She didn’t blink very often, he realised.

“D’you… d’you want to try it?”

Her smudged face lit up for a moment, then shuttered.

“I can’t,” she said. “Azirafather would be very worried. And Father would be angry when he found out, I think.”

“You said your father was out. What’s your other dad doing?”

“Working on his books.” Angelica stared at the bicycle, and he could tell she was rapidly sorting through pros and cons. James swung his leg over to set his other foot on the road, and held the bike out to her.

Angelica chewed on her lower lip, then took a step toward the gate.

The snake on her shoulders lifted its head and flickered its tongue at her ear.

“It’s fine, Clem,” she said. “Nothing's going to happen.”

This time he heard the snake hissing.

“Shut _ up_, Clem. Just because you don’t like legs doesn’t mean that _ some _ of us aren’t very good at working them.”

More hissing, and the snake wound forward, wrapping itself around her chest and upper arms like it was tying her up, hissing like a kettle all the while.

“Stop it right now, Clem. _ You’re _ the one who broke the rules first by sneaking out here to lie on the wall in the sun.”

James listened, fascinated at the conversation Angelica was constructing. Maybe the snake was like an overprotective dog.

“I _ will so _ do it.” Angelica unwound the large hissing snake firmly and deposited it back on the stone wall. “You’re not the boss of me, Clem.”

The snake pulled itself into a ball with just its head raised, weaving worriedly. Angelica marched to the gate and swung it open, joining James on the other side. He released the handlebars to her determined grip.

“Right,” she said. “What first?”

“Put your leg over it--yeah, tilt it toward you, that’s easier--then put that foot on the pedal and--”

“Uh-oh,” she said.

A large, dark car was barrelling toward them, kicking up a rooster tail of dust. Angelica sighed.

“Sorry about this,” she said.

“We should move,” James said, alarmed. He placed his hands next to hers on the handlebars and began pushing the bike further toward the wall. “That motor’s going awful fast and it may clip us, the way it’s driving.”

“No.” Angelica sighed, and the car made an impossible 90-degree turn into the lane that led behind the house, braking suddenly to a stop. The driver’s door opened, and a long, lanky, impossibly thin man with red hair unfolded himself out of the car.

“Hi, Father,” she said.

“Angelica,” the man said dryly.

James felt his throat tighten as the man’s gaze turned on him. He knew where Angelica had gotten her direct stare. The man wore sunglasses, so he couldn’t see his eyes, but he certainly felt them.

“This is James,” said Angelica.

“Hello, sir,” James said. (Since when did he call people sir?) “I'm… James MacGillivray.”

“James,” the man said, just as dryly. “Live around here, do you.”

“Other… other side of the village, sir.”

“What brings you out this way?”

No way was James going to tell him about the dare.

“I’m practicing biking further each day. I’ve been past your house a few times this week,” he added. “I only stopped today because I saw--”

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Angelica stiffen a bit. In his peripheral vision he also noticed that the snake was nowhere to be seen. It had scarpered, then. _Father tells him to stay in the back garden._

“--the orchard,” he said. “It’s so full. Everyone says they’ve never seen it so healthy. And I…”

“Thought you might help yourself to an apple?” The man seemed amused in his dry way. “Why didn’t you, then?”

“Angelica saw me stop my bike and warned me off, sir.”

“She did.” The man looked over the top of his sunglasses at his daughter, and for a moment James thought he saw the lightest brown eyes he’d ever seen. It must have been the angle of the sun so low on the horizon. “How unlike her. The Angelica I know would have given you a leg up.”

Angelica’s stubborn face broke into an impish grin.

“Can we pick some, Father?”

The man sighed.

“Go on, you. Pick enough to send home with your friend for his family, and enough for your angel dad to make tarts, too.”

And that was how James got to show off an apple to his mates, filling a dare far beyond just cycling past the orchard cottage at sundown. 

And that apple was the very best he’d ever tasted.

**Author's Note:**

> There is a postscript to this story that will be posted soon!
> 
> I started a [Tumblr under the same name](https://olwendylluan.tumblr.com/) for fic-associated stuff. Feel free to flail at me there!


End file.
